


The Snake Which Cannot Cast Its Skin

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Florida, Gen, Monster of the Week, Psychic Abilities, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:59:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20659100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Hearing voices is never a good sign, even in the world of the supernatural. But Dean has heard these voices before. They might provide more than the answers to a tricky case in the Florida Everglades the Winchesters must solve under the shadow of the Darkness.Written for spn_summergen 2019.





	The Snake Which Cannot Cast Its Skin

_The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind._ —Friedrich Nietzsche

There weren’t many secrets between the Winchester brothers anymore, but after all these years, Dean mused, he could still surprise Sam if he wanted to.

He knew what Sam thought, when he said he needed some alone time. Sam surely pictured him holed up in his room with a bottle of Jack and the latest Busty Asian Beauties (or in a pinch, the not-so-latest Voluptuous Asian Lovelies from that storage room where he’d found a whole box of them). He’d be right often enough, and wasn’t going to come looking for Dean anytime soon, regardless. But if he were to, he didn’t know to look for him here, in the long, golden September grass on the hill above the Bunker, where he lay soaking up the late sun’s rays. 

That wasn’t the secret though. The secret was his companion, and how he felt about it: a graceful, slim, grey-speckled ribbon gliding through the grass to stop an inch or two from Dean’s outstretched fingers. 

Dean opened his eyes, focusing on the black pinpoint eyes and the blurring-quick, flickering forked tongue. “What?” he asked. 

_Taste sad, _answered the snake. 

Dean sighed. Garter snakes looked a lot the same—there was the black kind with orange or yellow stripes, and this speckled gray kind, mostly—but this must be the same one he’d seen up here a few times lately. It made the serpentine reputation of cold, cruel, and indifferent seem especially ironic, since it acted like his therapist. 

He closed his eyes again. He felt the silence, broken only by a whisper of wind in the grass, felt the warmth of the Midwest sun and the truth of the snake’s words. 

Well, he wasn’t sure it could be called words, what formed in his mind when the snake “spoke”. He hadn’t hidden the fact that he could understand dogs for a while after he’d... been one briefly. Sam also knew that right after, he could hear other small, furry animals. 

He’d hardly expect to hide that little “gift”, after he’d jumped out of bed one night in a sweating panic, woken by a horrifying, gleefully murderous voice shrieking about BLOOD, SWEET GOOD HOT BLOOD and KILL, TEAR, KILL, KILL MORE! He grabbed a gun and Baby’s keys and ran for the door, startling Sam, who was still awake doing research. Sam simply listened to his terse explanation and suited up to follow him. Dean loved that about his brother. He never asked more questions than he needed to in a crisis. 

They jumped in the car and followed the Stephen King-scripted sounds to a farm two or three miles away. Then Sam could hear them too, though not in words. He heard the panicked screams of... chickens. When they got closer to the chicken coop, he heard the low, hissing growls of the raccoon whose bloodthirsty killing spree had pulled Dean out of sleep. 

After that, Dean learned to have some idea of what species of creature he was hearing, and was able to filter them out a little bit, but that part of the power had faded pretty quickly anyway. The “dog days” were barely a blip on the bizarro-radar of their existence. 

He didn’t hear dogs or murderous raccoons anymore, but Sam did not know he’d also been hearing snakes, and that it was far from the first time. 

He had no plans to spill _that _little tidbit. Dean was a pragmatic guy in this way. No need to look like a weirdo to his little brother or anyone else because he happened to be what Harry Potter nerd Sam would call a “Parselmouth”. He wasn’t sure why he pretended to be _afraid _of snakes, though. Maybe just to keep this one harmless thing to himself. 

_Sad? _Reptile Dr. Phil was more persistent than usual. Dean sighed. 

“Yeah. I guess.” 

The snake didn’t press for details. That was another thing Dean appreciated about their misperceived personalities. It wanted to know, that was all. Wanted acknowledgement. Dean stretched his fingers out a little further, and the snake twined itself through them. Snakes didn’t feel like people said they did either. Dean had a hard time not snorting when people called them slimy or cold. This one had soaked up the warmth of the sun and gave it now to Dean, wrapping his wrist gently. It was soft, like the finest leather. A little roughness in the scales on the widest part of its back told Dean it would shed its skin soon. It would grow and become shiny and new. Dean envied it. 

The afternoon was dimming, September growing old. Old, older. Summer was nearly gone. 

_Darkness comes, _said the snake, unwinding from Dean’s wrist as the sun sank behind the ridge. 

“Darkness is always coming,” answered Dean. He watched his friend glide away with the day’s last light before he went underground, where Busty Asian Beauties waited. 

* * *

Dean would never admit it to Sam, or Sully himself, but he’d been horribly jealous of Sam’s connection with the zanna. He thought about it in the days after they’d met Sully, and wasn’t entirely sure which direction the jealousy ran, mixed as it was with guilt that Sam had _needed _an imaginary friend. Did he wish he could have filled Sully’s role in Sam’s life, back then when he’d pretended it didn’t matter, the need for fun and friendship wasn’t real, that what really mattered was Mom’s death and Dad’s mission? Or did he want a friend and confidant, a zanna of his own? Weems had been pretty cool. Would he have liked that, if instead of sneaking peeks at Dad’s journal to find out whether Dead Man’s Blood was really as good as an old-fashioned machete, he’d been learning air guitar from the chubby, mulleted master? 

He grinned, but it faded quickly. He might have needed Weems once, but he’d long since accepted that Dad’s journal and a machete were the tools of his trade. While Sam was doing the real research about their pending case among the Men of Letters’ books and the Internet, Dean just paged through the old journal for nostalgic reasons. The journal was almost the only memento he had of his childhood, and he had memorized it too well to think he’d find any clue there about what was eating Florida boaters in the Everglades. The only common thread among the “disappearances” was that several of them had been hunting the huge pythons that had accidentally been introduced to the ecosystem there and were taking over, to the detriment of several endangered species. The state of Florida offered a bounty on the snakes, with a fat bonus for bigger ones, and it had brought out a lot of rednecks with boats that were providing hearty meals for Swamp Thing. 

He sighed as he paged past Dad’s drawing of a wendigo. It might be that, or a rougarou, or even over-enthusiastic vampires. More likely it was yet another new evil, and whether the Darkness was going to end the world soon or not, whether Dean could ever wake Sam from his nightmares of the Cage or prevent him going back there, someone had to go to the swamps of Florida to kill the thing, and he and Sam, as usual, were up to bat. 

He sighed. They had a long drive in the morning, and Sam would probably drag him out at the crack of dawn. He should get some shut-eye, so he set the old journal aside, and picked up the empty whiskey glass on his bedside table hopefully. He sucked the last few drops from it and reached over to turn out the light. 

**TASTE SAD, **a voice boomed suddenly. 

“Jesus!” Dean flung the glass toward the sound and rolled off the bed, snatching the gun from under his pillow. The glass shattered against brick as Dean stared around wildly. 

**SCARED, **the voice commented calmly, and Dean located its source at last. A huge snake, dappled dull yellow and black, was stretching its head down toward Dean’s bedside table, sliding out of a hole near the ceiling of Dean’s bedroom that he had never noticed before. It was a gap between the lintel and the brick wall that didn’t look big enough for such a huge thing to come out of. 

Dean didn’t lower his gun just yet, examining the snake’s patterning and the shape of its head. Sam might consider himself the junior zoologist between them, but Dean actually knew snakes, though he pretended not to. Pretended to fear them, and for a minute he _had_ feared this one, because if a rattlesnake had gotten into the Bunker that couldn’t be good, even if he could reason with it. 

It was not a rattlesnake, however. As it draped itself down from the wall and coiled to the floor with an audible thump, Dean realized it was the biggest bullsnake he’d ever seen. 

Dean did lower his gun then. Bullsnakes weren’t poisonous, and he thought it was unlikely to attack even if it weren’t starting a conversation with him. It was a good idea to make sure a snake was just a normal snake, and not a possessed, evil one or something. This one seemed to be, though Dean reflected ironically that he probably shouldn’t consider it normal that it was talking to him. But that was a weirdness in Dean himself, not in the snake. Though this one was at least seven feet long—maybe closer to eight—it still wasn’t big enough to eat him, he told himself as his heart gradually slowed. 

**NOT HUNGRY, **the snake seemed to answer his thought. **EAT RATS FOR YOU AND BIGGER YOU. **

Well, at least the Bunker would never have a rodent problem. 

Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and eyed the snake, which made itself into a docile coil with head raised slightly, tongue darting in that fashion Dean had come to see as friendly. “You’re a loud one,” Dean commented, shaking his head slightly. The sound didn’t come through his ears, but the boom of the snake’s voice still felt like an auditory assault. 

**OLD. OLDEST FRIEND OF YOU, **said the snake. **FROM BEFORE LAST SHED. **

Dean mulled this over for a moment, and was startled when he interpreted it. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You mean you…” He paused, thinking of how to say this in snake terms. “You knew me when I wasn’t as big as I am now?” 

**YOU SHED MAYBE TWICE SINCE THEN, **the snake confirmed. 

Dean frowned. Did snakes live that long? And where would he have seen this one, enough times in all his youthful travels that it remembered him? If he had, how had the snake gotten from there to the Bunker, surrounded as it was by miles of empty prairie? 

He sighed, exhausted. It was probably a trick. Snakes… they were a symbol of evil, of the Devil. Sam had been dreaming of Lucifer. Had Lucifer sent this snake to fool him into something? He eyed it cautiously, keeping his grip on the gun at his side. But then he remembered… 

Bobby’s place. South Dakota was home to more bullsnakes than Dean had ever seen anywhere else, and Bobby’s place had plenty of them that Dean used to catch, along with the smaller garter snakes. After he’d figured out he could talk to them—a power that had faded as he got older, until it came back after he turned into a dog—he just asked them not to run (or rather slither) away, and they stayed, keeping him company when Dad and Bobby were gone and Sam would rather stay inside and read books than play among the rusted junk. He’d played with snakes whenever no one else was around, making “homes” for them among the abandoned cars in the salvage yard. An old Ford Country Squire had a surprising number of places to create snake habitats, like that awesome fold-down rear seat compartment that Dean thought of as his secret stow-away spot, and Bobby had never found them. Nor had Sam or his father. 

They’d come to Bobby’s often enough that he could find his old friends there on later visits, sometimes. He hadn’t thought of this in years. Did this snake look familiar, if much bigger than any that had slept in the glovebox and curled in and out of the vents of the old station wagon? 

The snake slid slowly toward him. Dean knew most people would recoil in fear. Maybe he should, if the thing could be from Lucifer. But he just couldn’t feel any fear. Instead, he wondered if he had drunk more whiskey than he thought, because tears sprang to his eyes as the snake rubbed its head up his calf, flicking its tongue to scent him, and he let go of the gun to let his fingers slide over the glossy-smooth scales of its head as it rested it on his knee. 

**TASTE SAD AGAIN, **it said. **BETTER SAD. **

It _was_a better sad, Dean reflected. His heart ached, remembering his graceful, silent, secret friends among the salvage. He had grown up in the shadow of evil, with a dead mother, an obsessively vengeful father, and a brother whom he loved more than life—but who didn’t want the life they lived. Dean had been torn for as long as he could remember between wanting another life for Sam and wanting Sam more present in this one—wanting Sam to want what he wanted. But he realized, more and more often these days, that he didn’t know what that was. He’d thought he wanted to fight the good fight. He and Sam were battling the evils of this world and trying to make it a better place. But no matter how many times he salted and burned it, evil still rose again. No matter how many heads he cut off, it grew two more in each’s place. 

Sometimes they fed the evil instead of fighting it. If the Darkness destroyed the world, it would be Dean’s fault. And he would rather kiss her than cut off her head. He could fight forever, or he could fall into the arms of evil and let it win at last, because there was nothing for him to _want. _

The snake had coiled around his calves. **HERE NOW, **it said, and Dean knew it was saying it had missed him, or acknowledging that Dean had missed it, or both. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked wearily. 

**GROOTSLANG, **said the snake. 

“What?” Dean had never heard the word. 

**OUR HUNGRY COUSIN, **it answered. **EATS OTHER YOUS THAT FLOAT IN HOT GREEN PLACE. **

Dean took a moment to digest this. Another thing he liked about snakes was that there was zero pressure, ever. The snake betrayed no sign of impatience and did not interrupt him. It did not offer clarification, because it couldn’t. The way it had expressed its idea was the only way it had. 

The first “bigger you” the snake had mentioned was clearly Sam. He’d thought that was because Sam had been with him in both parts of Dean’s life that the snake had visited—he probably even smelled (or “tasted”) the same as Dean, maybe, since they were brothers. But he now realized that “other yous” must just mean other humans. Floating in a hot green place—the Florida boaters that were going missing! “Cousin” was easy enough to interpret. 

“So it’s like a snake, but it eats people,” he said. 

**HUNGRY, **agreed the snake. **OTHER MES FEAR. NOT GOOD. YOU FIX. LESS SAD. **

Dean smiled. This was a complex string of thoughts for the snake. Its tongue flicking faster was the only sign it showed of having to work hard to express all this. 

**OTHER MES HELP IN HOT GREEN PLACE, **the snake added after a minute. **SHOW YOU WHERE. **

Sam would love that, Dean reflected. How the hell was he going to follow snake-guides without explaining all this to Sam? But oddly, his heart was lighter. A giant snake monster he could handle, and Boomer (as he decided to name for his mentally-loud old friend) was right. It would make him less sad. It was a fight he could win. 

“I’ll have to explain it all to Sam in the morning, do some research on grootslangs,” he said. “But yeah. We’ll take care of it. You can hold down the fort here.” 

**EAT RATS, **answered the snake affably. 

“You do that. Ummm…” Dean trailed off as the snake, having reared up to half its height, hitched itself forward and slithered into his bed. 

**MAKE SLEEP PLACE WARM, **it said, and Dean could not tell if this was a comment or a directive. Snakes liked body warmth, but he had never slept with one before. He didn’t _cuddle_ snakes. Exactly. Did he? 

Whatever. The weight of the whiskey was pulling him toward sleep, and this had to be a dream, anyway. It happened that way in hunting, sometimes. He’d probably wake up with a hangover, sure he had heard the term grootslang somewhere years before, his subconscious having solved the case by dreaming that a snake gave him the answer. Sam was more inclined toward brainwaves like that, but Dean had had his share. 

“OK, move over,” he said, fluffing his pillow. The snake obligingly slid to the other side of the bed as Dean got in, sighing as the comfort of Memory foam embraced him. He really did feel much better. It was nice to meet an old friend, if only in a dream. 

* * *

“Dean! Jesus! Oh shit… don’t move!” 

Dean woke to the panicked shout from Sam. Normally this would be enough to have him out of bed groping for a weapon before he was even half-awake, but for some reason he couldn’t dredge up any worry. He felt… weirdly safe, warm, and happy. 

He blinked Sam into focus. Sam was standing in the doorway, eyes huge, holding out his hands placatingly, as he would to a panicked person with a gun. He was edging toward Dean’s dresser, and suddenly snatched the gun that was lying there. Dean finally came completely awake. 

“Sam, what’s—” 

“Don’t move, Dean!” Sam repeated, sharply but in a whisper. He trained the gun on… Dean? “I got this… just don’t scare it.” 

“It?” He looked down, following Sam’s gaze. The giant bullsnake he was sure he had dreamed was coiled on his chest, a comforting weight. Its head was resting just under his chin, its tail curled around his left arm. 

Oh boy. OK, so, not a dream. He had some `splaining to do now. 

“Sam, put the gun down. He won’t hurt me. Or you. It’s… kind of hard to explain…” 

**TASTE SCARED, **commented Boomer calmly. Dean ignored him for now. The gun didn’t waver. Sam, lost for words, only squinted at him. 

After a moment, Sam said, “Dean, if you startle it and it strikes… anyway, I thought you’d be pissing your pants right now! You’re terrified of snakes!” 

“No, I’m not, but anyway, it… he’s just a bullsnake, Sam. Harmless. Just put the gun down and I’ll explain.” 

Sam, staring hard at the snake, finally lowered the gun, but still gripped it firmly. “Yeah, it… does look like a bullsnake,” he agreed. “But how do you know what kind of snake it is? And what do you mean, you’re not scared of them? And what is it doing in your _bed?_” 

**WARM, **said Boomer. 

“He likes the warmth,” Dean answered without thinking. Sam was looking at him like he was bonkers, but he’d been doing that a fair bit lately, anyway. “Look, Sam. I know this snake. He came to warn us about the grootslang in the Florida swamp. And as for me and snakes, I… guess I just let you think I was scared of them because the truth is… weird.” 

“Weird.” Sam said flatly. He gave Dean The Look, expressing so much with a single word. He blinked, and Dean could see him mentally readjusting. “It knows about grootslangs? And now you do? They’re pretty obscure... I found them after hours of researching last night.” He sighed. “Well. Weird is what we do, after all. Can we get that thing out of here? They’re not poisonous, but they still have sharp teeth…” 

“He won’t bite me. He’s… OK, I know it’s weird. He’s an old friend. I thought it was a dream, but…” 

Sam just waited, still eyeing the snake nervously. Dean sighed and sat up; Sam’s eyes widened as Dean gathered Boomer’s coils and set him on the floor. 

**EAT MORE RATS, **Boomer said, uncoiling languidly. **YOU END GROOTSLANG. **With these parting words he slithered toward the wall, inching up the bricks toward the opening in the ceiling. Dean watched, fascinated. He could lift him up, but the snake seemed to be doing fine on its own—gripping the rough edges of the bricks with its body, climbing with muscular grace—and it was _cool. _

“Where’s it going?” Sam asked nervously. 

“To eat rats. We’ll never have a rodent problem, at least.” 

“Can you ask it...” Sam shook his head. “Never mind.” 

Dean knew what Sam wanted to ask. He grinned. “Hey, Boomer. Stay out of Sam’s room, eh? Er... Bigger Me doesn’t like... company.” 

**NOT WARM, **Boomer acknowledged cryptically, and began squeezing his body into the hole while Sam stared, an expression of mingled horror and fascination on his face. There was a silence as the snake disappeared. 

“Well,” Sam said after a moment, “we’ve followed weirder leads. Suit up. We’ve got a giant snake-monster to hunt.” 

* * *

A few hours later, as the Impala sped out of Missouri and crossed a little corner of Kentucky, Sam had gotten the whole story out of Dean. A few Parselmouth jokes later, he’d mostly accepted it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said, after a few miles of silence. “When we were kids, I mean.” 

“Well... I mean, it was weird, right? What would Dad have said if he found out? He’d probably have tried to have me exorcised or something.” 

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t have told him. I... would have thought it was cool.” 

“You don’t think, later, you would have thought I’d gotten some demon blood too, or something?” 

“I’d know you hadn’t.” 

There was a stiff silence. Of course, hearing snakes was not the same as being earmarked as a kind of prince of evil. Sore subject. 

“When we were kids... you know,” Sam continued. I had an imaginary friend, who turned out to be a real supernatural creature, so I don’t think I would have thought talking to snakes was that weird.” 

“You know, I thought of that, after we met Sully this time around. That it was kind of my version of that. I couldn’t hear them after I was about seventeen, eighteen. After I grew up. It came back when I could hear dogs for a while. The snake voices just didn’t go away with the other voices.” 

“Snakes are your spirit animal.” 

Dean snorted, but Sam didn’t laugh. “Seriously?” 

“Yep. It holds up. Rebirth, transmutation, watchfulness of danger...” 

Dean scoffed again. “OK, Deepak. I’ll be watchful of danger once we get to the swamp. Meanwhile I want to be watchful of a burger. Let’s try this exit. I’m hungry.” 

“Hungry like the grootslang,” Sam muttered, and Dean grinned. They were on the case, one they could solve, and for a minute, the Darkness seemed far away. 

* * *

When they arrived in the Florida Everglades, Sam asked two or three locals what the best insect repellant was before buying about a gallon of it. Dean gave up protesting fairly quickly as Sam started listing reasons. “West Nile virus. Dengue fever. Zika. Chikungunya...” 

“Those aren’t even words,” Dean grumbled, but obligingly doused himself with Off before they headed out. 

Sam wore boots and flinched at movement in the shadows for a while, but Dean was impressed with how quickly he got used to Dean’s conversations with corn snakes and coral snakes. Understandably, he was a little flinchy when the first big rattlesnake, whose mental voice was almost as loud as Boomer’s, gave a friendly rattle from the brush to indicate it wanted a chat with Dean. Dean reflected that it seemed to be age, not size, that dictated the power of a snake’s voice, as well as its ability to express complex thoughts. The whispers of newly-hatched cottonmouth made little sense, mostly commenting on the “taste” of Sam and Dean and expressing curiosity, sometimes hunger. Dean firmly admonished these to keep their distance; he could not be sure the babies knew not to bite. 

Older snakes knew about the grootslang, though, and after half a day of trying to follow their directions, it became clear that there was no path to its lair by land. They rented a boat, and Dean again admired his brother’s unflappable nature as the water around them swarmed with swimming reptiles, all chiming encouragement and directions in Dean’s head. Sam was merely grateful for the direction, and ready to close this hot, creepy, buggy-muggy case with a win they both needed. 

Alligators made Dean a thousand times more nervous than snakes ever could. He found that he could sort of hear them, but their voices were much fainter than those of snakes, and they did not address Dean directly. They gave him the creeps, mostly talking about their perpetual hunger and how much they wanted to grow. Like certain men Dean had known, they spent a lot of time crowing about how they were the biggest, their jaws the most powerful, and the smaller they were, the louder they were about it. A little foot-long baby gator was bragging that it would eat everything in its path and fill the whole swamp with its beautiful self, and Dean decided they didn’t need any alligator company on this trip. He projected a sense of extreme danger to every gator voice he heard, and found that they were cowards. Their path was gator-free in no time. 

Fortunately, though stories differed on what the grootslang actually looked like, with “elephant-headed snake” being the most common description, they all agreed that nothing special was required to kill it. Well, nothing like a knife dipped in lamb’s blood or anything like that. Beheading something that big or getting enough bullets into it was going to be the real challenge. Dean had a grenade launcher strapped to his back and hoped its moment had finally come. 

Their slither-swimming escort thinned out as the boat found its way to the dark heart of the swamp. Dean gathered that Florida boatmen were not the only things the snakes’ “hungry cousin” was eating. Boomer urging them to hunt the grootslang made sense, though Dean supposed he would never know how the reptiles communicated across 1,700 miles. Sam’s theories of a snake collective consciousness and how Dean might be tapping into it made his eyes glaze over. 

Suddenly, the swamp around them fell silent, both mentally and auditorily. Dean listened closely and heard a last distant whisper of _eat big cruel cousin _as the eerie silence pressed in on their boat. They both sat forward on high alert. A low rumble opened the box of silence, growing until they recognized the sound of water. 

“Hang on!” Sam shouted as a huge wave swamped the boat. They barely clung on as the boat was smashed onto an islet consisting mostly of the roots of a great cypress tree. They clung among the roots as a trumpeting roar split the swamp and Dean’s head all at once. 

**EAT YOU!**it said, and there was a real roar as loud as the mental one, louder than Boomer, louder than an air siren or an exploding jet engine or anything Dean had ever heard, and the mental onslaught brought him to his knees as Sam covered his ears and staggered backwards as if in hurricane winds. 

“Dean! Get the grenade launcher!” 

Dean was already fumbling it into his hands when they got their first full view of the monster. Its head did resemble an elephant’s, but otherwise it looked more like a legless alligator than anything—one the size of a semi truck. Legends of giant gators in the Everglades made perfect sense now. All the legends eventually did. 

“You don’t want to eat us!” Dean shouted as he trained the scope on the beast. “We’re all gristle!” He would’ve fired then, but he slipped, trying to find his footing among the mired tree-roots. He forgot that the grootslang might understand him, as other snakes did. It hesitated, confused, then charged through the water toward them. 

**YOU HUNT COUSINS! KILL WITHOUT EATING! I EAT YOU ALL! **It lashed out with its tail. Dean dropped the grenade launcher and tried to grab the nearest root as the resultant wave swamped the cypress island. He felt his fingernails tear as he was ripped from the root and flung across the swamp. 

He struggled, muddy water filling his mouth and eyes as he fought not to inhale it. The mud sucked at his legs like a live thing, filling his boots and pulling him down like cement shoes. He tried to yank his feet out of them, but they were tightly laced. Another blow from the grootslang’s tail stunned him and sent him into deeper water. He flailed blindly in the direction he hoped the surface lay, but the pressure on his lungs was nearly bursting, panic setting in as a great booming vibration rattled his bones. Good, he thought, as the curtains began to close over his mind. Sam must’ve gotten a shot off with the grenade launcher… good old Sam, closing the case even as Dean’s was closing forever. Drowning wasn’t such a terrible death, he thought. At least he was among friends… 

He should have known, though, that Sam would come for him. A strong arm wrapped his torso and pulled him into air. He tried to tread water, blinded by the mud in his eyes, clinging to his brother’s strength until he felt earth under his feet. He fell to his knees and vomited swamp water, Sam’s arm holding him up as he coughed spasmodically until his lungs were finally clear. 

“Close one, Sammy,” he croaked, but there was no answer. 

NEED AIR, NOT WATER, commented a characteristically calm, serpentine voice. It was louder than most of the Florida snakes so far, but quieter than Boomer. NO SQUEEZE. 

The “arm” around his torso suddenly released him, and Dean’s clearing vision revealed a huge python uncoiling from around him. 

“Dean? Dean!” Sam was splashing toward him, avoiding deeper water by jumping from muddy island to tree root until he reached Dean on relatively dry land. 

“Is it dead?” Dean croaked. 

“In pieces. The grenade launcher was a good idea.” 

“Told you.” 

Sam reached his side and sat down in the mud. He looked like a nightmare, painted with mud and blood and other mysterious substances. 

“You OK?” they both asked in the same breath. 

Sam huffed a laugh. “I’m good. I’m not the one that took a hit from a giant snake-monster tail,” he said. “You?” 

“Wouldn’t be here if not for another snake-tail,” Dean answered, nodding at the python, which had slithered amiably aside to make room for Sam and was now coiled a mere foot from him, flicking its tongue curiously. 

Dean wouldn’t soon let Sam forget the sound he made when he looked up into the face of a 12 or 13-foot python. He laughed so hard tears were streaming down his face, the python circling back around Sam to curl itself under Dean’s arm. 

TASTE FUN, it said. 

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, wiping his eyes, then wishing he hadn’t. It only made his face muddier. “Funny, though,” he said, after Sam gave up scowling and started laughing too. “That a regular snake scared you, but you faced down a reptile-monster mountain without batting an eye.” 

“Monsters are what we do,” Sam answered mildly. “Besides, I was expecting the grootslang. I thought all the snakes left because they were scared of it.” 

“Fair point. What were you doing here?” he asked the python. 

FRIEND OF YOU, it answered. 

Dean smiled. It was good to have friends. 

* * *

A few days after they got back to the Bunker, Boomer came for another visit. He hadn’t come back to Dean’s bedroom, and Dean wasn’t sure whether he was happy or sad about that. Dean was taking his alone time on the hill over the Bunker, as he had been before all this began. He’d been half-hoping his little friend Dr. Phil would show up, though its thoughts were less complex than Boomer’s. It was probably underground now—the days were getting chilly, and Dean had grabbed a rare hour of warm sun. Boomer must be doing the same before settling in for hibernation. 

“Hey,” Dean greeted the bullsnake. 

**DARKNESS COMES, **said Boomer. 

Dean glanced at the sky. The sun was still high, barely past noon. “You don’t mean the sun going down, I guess.” 

The snake assented with silence, coiling against Dean’s side. “You mean… the Darkness.” 

**LONGER DARK. LONGER COLD THAN WINTER. YOU FIGHT. **

“Planning on it.” Dean wanted to ask how it knew… about that, or about the creature in the swamp hundreds of miles away, or how to find a lonely child that could speak to it, among all the kids of the world. But he knew the snake could not give any answers that he wanted. 

He couldn’t help asking one thing, though. “Will I… keep hearing you? I couldn’t for a long time. I only started again because…” He stopped. The potion that made him a dog was too advanced an idea for the snake to understand. 

**ALWAYS HEAR, **Boomer said. From the bundle of serpentine thought, Dean extracted something more—that he could always have heard, if he’d tried. The snakes had never gone silent. Dean had stopped listening. 

**WE FEEL WHAT COMES. TELL YOU AND BIGGER YOU. **

“Are you saying you can help against the Darkness?” Dean laughed mirthlessly. “I hate to break it to ya, but… well, it’s the end of the world, probably. Snakes might be OK, I guess. But not me and… other mes. We might be gone when you come back up in the spring.” 

**HERE, **insisted Boomer. **FRIEND OF YOU. **

Sam was right about snakes as his spirit animal, Dean reflected as the silky-cool head pushed under his hand. He’d read up on it, and the Ouroborus really was the perfect symbol for the Winchesters. Life and death following each other in a circle that never ended, defeat and victory in balance, changing with the seasons, always returning. Darkness might be coming, but the light would come back, brighter than the sun, to warm Sam and Dean and the old bullsnake lying on a Kansas hilltop, tasting happiness and sadness, fear and love, and, ever abandoning them and ever returning, hope. 


End file.
